Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Anne Berry. Today, you can exhale now. NVIDIA is doing just fine. And Kalshi finally tracks down on insider trading. It's Thursday, February 26. Let's ride. Good morning. Just a heads up, Toby is out for the rest of the week at a wedding on the West Coast. Classic Toby. So we are lucky to have Anne Berry, the host of Brew Markets, Step in to be my news partner in crime over the next two days, and it is great to have you here. Thank you. And matching green shirts. We are. I'm so excited. Very cozy. So I've got a new hobby idea for you all, birdwatching. Not only is it a great excuse to get out in nature, but it also may give your brain a boost. A new study published in a neuroscience journal Monday found that expert birdwatchers compared to novices showed alterations in their brains that could enhance cognition, While the research doesn't conclude that birding prevents cognitive decline, it does suggest that the activity may support brain health as you get older, which is great news, Anne, because there are only so many crosswords that I can do. Oh, well, I love that. And it's just interesting. Wordle's the other one, right? And then you've got Sudoku. Well, this one's really interesting because birdwatching has sort of grown in popularity. And there are a couple of interesting numbers coming out of this. The Canadian study of 58 adults showed that compared to novices, people were more dense in areas like attention and perception by getting involved in bird watching. So I want more attention and perception. So I think this sounds like something I need to take up. OK, let's head to Wall Street, where NVIDIA is making an argument as the most successful business in the history of capitalism. Already the world's most valuable company, NVIDIA posted quarterly earnings yesterday that have little precedent. Total revenue spiked 73 percent from a year earlier to over $68 billion, crushing projections. profits soared 94% to $43 billion, also crushing projections, and gross margins rose to a staggering 75%. Despite fears of an AI bubble, the chip maker has continued to grow like a weed and make more money than God, which may or may not be CEO Jensen Huang. While looking at 2025 in full, NVIDIA raked in over $100 billion in profits, up from $4.4 billion just three years ago. Looking ahead, NVIDIA sees the good times rolling, projecting revenue this quarter to come in 77% higher than a year ago. And when NVIDIA reports earnings, it's such a seismic event because it's not just about NVIDIA. It's about confidence in the AI revolution more broadly. And recently, that confidence has been shaken along two different vectors. One, investors are worried that the historic spending on AI hardware, the kind NVIDIA sells, is not sustainable. The other fear is that AI will be so successful that it wipes out large swaths of the market by upending the business models of software companies. So there was a lot riding on what NVIDIA had to say yesterday afternoon. And just like Alyssa Liu, it came up clutch when the country needed it to. But this is one, this is so interesting, Neil. NVIDIA wins no matter what, right? So this is, I spend all day looking at the markets. And the way you just described it is whether AI actually ends up knocking out whole bunches of the market or letting others soar. At the end of the day, NVIDIA is like the water and the oxygen to all of these. People are going to go back to feed at the trough that is the NVIDIA chip stack. So they're up for a great time. I'm just, well, watch today to see whether the market rewards these amazing results or does what it's done in the past, which is say, we're so used to great and amazing things from you, NVIDIA. Now you actually need to do even better. We're going to move the goalpost. And that's been the very interesting thing about NVIDIA probably over the past six months. If you look at its stock chart, it's pretty much sideways. It's barely budged. I think it's up about 5%, 6%. And then it reported what I'm maybe calling the best quarter in the history of capitalism. And its stock has barely budged. What do you make of that? Why is NVIDIA that had skyrocketed, that's showing such incredible growth and its stock had skyrocketed since ChatGPT came out in 2022? Investors aren't rewarding it. I think it's like the overachieving child whose parents get used to it doing really well and just, you know, at some point says, how do you even do better? There's no more reward we can give you. There's no better that we need to raise the bar even more dramatically. And then you're in the realm of the not feasible. So I think, unfortunately, this one has just got sort of the market scratching its head saying, well, where else can it go at a valuation that already feels kind of uncomfortable? It could be also some skepticism that the spending by what are known as hyperscalers just is not sustainable. Hyperscalers are those big tech AI companies that are spending so much on data centers and NVIDIA hardware. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft already this earnings season has said they will spend about $650 billion this year on capital expenditures, much of which is going to NVIDIA. That is up from $31 billion a decade ago. It's a spending spree that people are comparing to building the railroads or building out telecom infrastructure and building out the internet, things on that particular scale. and investors are just a bit skeptical that they can continue to keep spending. And these are NVIDIA's biggest customers. Maybe that's another reason why NVIDIA stock isn't being rewarded like this. Well, we just see OpenAI say they're going to perhaps, well, there's speculation that OpenAI may pay back some of its spending. All that being said, look, I agree with that. But it's interesting. We only focus on those big four names. There are lots of other NVIDIA customers out there. And there are actually other kinds of sectors and companies that complain that they can't get access to enough NVIDIA chips because they're being crowded out, to your point, by the hyperscalers. So I agree. I do think there is some skepticism there, but I just feel as though the demand for NVIDIA chips, there are other pockets the market doesn't talk about quite so loudly. And now whenever Jensen Huang gets on these earnings calls, everyone wants to hear what he has to say because he is at the center of the AI universe. And much of the talk in the market, as I'm sure you know, is about this software wipeout. Everyone, not everyone, but many people think that certain AI agents will come along and upend the business models of DoorDash, of ServiceNow, of Workday, companies like that. Well, Jensen Huang got up there and said, I think the markets got it wrong. He thinks that AI agents are going to use these existing software tools that are already in existence. Says that's the reason we also say agents are tool users. So he says, yeah, AI agents are going to come along. He's very bullish on AI agents, obviously. But he says they are going to use the existing tools rather than completely wipe them out. So yes, he says that people are going to continue to spend. We said demand is rising for our products exponentially At the same time don worry about this software thing That mostly just a freakout which many people have also agreed with Moving on facing backlash that it not doing enough to combat insider trading Kalshi has begun cracking down, and of course MrBeast videos are involved. Yesterday, the fast-growing prediction market platform said it was suspending an editor who works for MrBeast, the world's biggest YouTuber, fined him and referred him to federal authorities. It is a watershed moment. this is the first time that Kalshi has made public the results of any of its investigations into insider trading. The editor, Artem Captor, traded around $4,000 on markets related to Mr. Beast, according to Kalshi, and despite placing bets with low odds, he had, quote, near-perfect trading success, which set off alarm bells for the surveillance team. Then, according to the company's head of enforcement, we investigated and found that the trader was employed as an editor for the streamer's show and likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading. Kalshi booted another person, too, for insider trading. This one, a politician. Kyle Langford was a Republican gubernatorial candidate who last year posted on X that he used Kalshi to bet on himself in the race, which Kalshi says it's against its rules that ban candidates in a political campaign from making wagers in markets related to their own elections. And Kalshi is on the hot seat over market manipulation. It's trying to show it takes us seriously. It does. You know, it's interesting. You know that there's this act that's trying to be passed at the moment, stop insider trading so that Congress members can't trade. I actually, I need to go back and look to see if they're also going to be banned from using prediction markets, actually. This is a story about the gubernatorial candidate reminded me of that. Well, it looks as though this is actually a good crackdown. And there's a little bit of a battle underway at the moment, Neil, which is who actually regulates prediction markets. You've got the CFTC trying to keep a hold of the oversight of this particular part of the market, trying to hold on to its fiefdom. And so the fact that Cauchy is trying to self-regulate, I thought was kind of interesting because if you want to avoid being regulated by others, you've got to regulate yourself. And so this seems to be a step in that direction why that sort of political battle is underway. What is also funny is just there's a pretty big Mr. Beast ecosystem on Kaoshi. You can wager on a lot of Mr. Beast stuff. You can bet what he's going to say in his next video. There's a market on the number of subscribers that he's going to reach by the end of the year. You can you can actually bet on when he's going to get married. So somebody who's in his inner circle who's editing his videos probably knows exactly what he's going to say next year. And this has been a concern that's not just Mr. Beast related, but goes across things like what Trump is going to say at the State of the Union, what Bad Bunny's first song will be at the Super Bowl. And it's interesting that you mentioned putting Kalshi in the same breadth as regular stock market, because that is what the executives at Kalshi are trying to say. They say there's bad actors everywhere. There's insider trading in the stock market. We are being unfairly targeted for criticism because maybe we're just the new kid on the block. They actually have 200 investigations into insider trading right now, 12 of which are still ongoing, and we may see further crackdowns. But I think this is kind of them showing and telling us that they take this issue seriously because there is a fight right now. There's a bunch of states that have sued Kalshi. They wanted to go away. The federal government has protected them. The Trump administration has been very friendly to prediction markets. But there's a lot of swirling concern around Calci. We should mention there's another one out there, Polymarket, which is probably known to be less intensive on their insider trading investigations. But it's interesting to see these particular two enforcement actions, especially when it comes to Mr. Beast's editor. There's also real money in here. There's one story. Last month, we saw a trader made $400,000 in profit on Polymarket, to your point. And that was because a bet was placed on the capture of the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro, before there was any public indication that would happen. 400 grand, just remember, that someone's gain is somebody else's loss. Here, they're real dollars. The only question I have, Neil, is how many bets are being placed on Kaoshi around the color of Neil Fryman's sweater, or what pun he's going to use next on Morning Brew Daily. It could be there. I haven't checked. But it's either going to be a dark green or a navy blue. You only have two options. Moving on, Claude, the chatbot from Anthropic, has a reputation for being the chill, safe, company-approved AI you'd bring home to your mom. but it's got a naughty streak. Yesterday, cybersecurity researchers reported that a hacker used Claude to break into Mexican government systems, stealing off with 150 gigabytes of data, including voter records, government employee credentials, and documents related to 195 million taxpayer records. It's not the first time, nor the last, that AI will be deployed by bad actors to infiltrate cyber defenses, an alarming development that keeps your IT department up at night. Here's how this went down, according to Bloomberg. the hacker who is not to believe to be working for a state back group wrote spanish language prompts into claude telling it it was an elite hacker and instructed it to find vulnerabilities in government systems and exploit them claude was not a total pushover and it sometimes refused to comply with the hacker's request due to guardrails that had been implemented but the individual found a way to override those and ultimately was able to so-called jailbreak the ai so it did what the hacker wanted it to do and it seems that with a little effort cleverness and help from your neighborhood AI chatbot, hacking just got a whole lot easier. Oh, and also it looks like these chatbots are helping each other. So there was an amazing nugget in this story. When Claude came into problems or required additional information, or if Anthropic was pushing back too much, Claude was pushing back too much, the hacker would go to OpenAI's chat GPT and say, chat GPT, give me additional insights here. And that included how to move laterally through the computer networks and figure out which credentials were needed to crack into certain systems. So basically, when Claude didn't deliver, ChatGPT did. Well, it's nice to have friends to help you hack. But this isn't an isolated incident. There's been a number of other instances of people using chatbots to hack into systems. Just back in November, Anthropic said it disrupted the first AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign. It accused Chinese state hackers of manipulating Claude to hack 30 global targets. and some of those which were successful. Also this week, feels like Anthropic's just been in the news a lot about perhaps straying from its original mission. So Anthropic was born because a bunch of OpenAI employees said, we don't like the way this is going. We're gonna create a much safer alternative. And then they created Anthropic in 2021. So safety has been core to Anthropic since its beginning, but it looks like it's rolling that back. The company said on Tuesday that it is softening its core safety policy because the AI market is too competitive So previously when a model was deemed too dangerous it would not release it until it fixed that But now it saying it not going to do that because there's so much competition. And so say if OpenAI or XAI releases a competitor that could be better than Claude, they say that they're just going to continue, they're going to release the model anyway. And they're basically citing a lack of federal AI regulations as the reason why they're saying the federal government just doesn't seem to care about this that much. And we are just going to follow their lead a little bit. So Anthropik's certainly been rolling back at safety. That announcement on Tuesday was a big one. Yeah, a huge one also, too, in the context of Anthropik's being known as the player that's really pushed into B2B. We think of chat GPT as something that consumers use sort of all day, every day, whereas Anthropik, I think part of the reason they've been able to penetrate that business base so much better is because they had this commitment to safety and this commitment to the data being protected once it went in there. So we'll see what the repercussions here are in terms of the take up. That being said, big slew of Anthropik announcements recently. To your point, as you said earlier, Neil, partnering with these software providers, we saw those stocks bumping back up because they really like the idea that these plugins are coming. So we'll see what this actually does in terms of demand for Anthropik's products. But I have a spidey sense that it's actually, particularly with stories like the hacking efficacy, probably not going to go anywhere. Up next, why video gaming is in decline. Movement's not about numbers. It's about intention. Been reading those inspirational sports quotes again? Oh, every day. But I'm talking about things like our Davos trip or early call times. Basically daily essential movements that we could be more thoughtful about. Whoop's wearable tech helps with that. With it, you can understand what's going on in your body and make better decisions. Whoop helps build awareness and highlights patterns so you can show up with more presence and intention. Turn data into meaningful everyday impact. Learn more at join.whoop.com slash brew daily. That's join.whoop.com slash brewdaily. Toby, do you know what advertisers care about more than anything? Don't tell me. Don't tell me. Impact? No, Toby, don't be ridiculous. Oh, you actually got that right. And Disney Campaign Manager helps agencies and brands show up in a more impactful way during the live sports premieres and canvas moments audiences love. That way, marketers can reach fans where they're most engaged across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN streaming platforms. Turn attention into action by building campaigns around the moments people talk about. Launch quickly, optimize easily, and get the results you're looking for. Get started today at disneycampaignmanager.com, disneycampaignmanager.com. Neil, I want to tell you about something I personally love very much. Is it me, your good friend and co-host? No, it's not my work friend and co-host. It's Spectrum Business, which keeps businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with fast, reliable internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services, all backed by 100% US-based support. Spectrum Business offers tailored connectivity solutions with packages built for your business budget. In fact, millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected. So whether your business is big or small, visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. That's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Welcome to Neil's numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will make you even smarter than birdwatching. My first number surprised me when I learned it, and it might surprise you too. Americans are spending less time video gaming than they used to, like even to below pre-COVID levels. The researcher and investor Matthew Ball reported that surveys consistently show that the share of the U.S. population that games has fallen by up to four percentage points since before the pandemic, which supercharged the activity. And this isn't just a U.S. story either. Video game playing has mostly stayed stagnant or declined across the eight major developed markets. In South Korea, for example, the share of the population that plays video games has fallen by 15 points compared to the 2017-2019 average. The decline is hitting all corners of the industry, too. Consider that in the U.S., mobile game installs are at a 12-year low while hours played on your phone has fallen considerably. What's going on? Ball argues that video games are, quote, under clear assault from novel forms of interactivity that emerged or scaled since 2019. In other words, there are other ways we found to entertain ourselves like sports betting, online gambling and only fans. Back in 2019, U.S. spending on those three pastimes was about one point two five billion combined. Today, it is thirty three billion and video games appear to be losing the attention war. Yeah, it's interesting. Video games, at least people are engaged in using them and they're losing share to sort of the more passive activity of scrolling. Let's also talk about TikTok, right? In the assault on the, in the war for eyeballs, Americans spent just under 110 million daily hours on TikTok. That was in 2024. It's actually been up since then. So yeah, it looks as though gaming replaced by more passive activity or on the flip side, doing more in the betting arena. And there is some pockets of the industry that are growing. There's mainly one and it's called Roblox. Roblox had 150 million daily users in the third quarter of 2025. It's quarterly engagement right now is the is equivalent to Steam, PlayStation and Fortnite combined. And younger users, much younger users to their over. So they could they could stick with this platform for a long time. So video game industry in decline, people are playing less except if you're Roblox, which is crushing it. Okay, for my next number, don't look now, but South Korea is having a baby bump. Considered the poster child for demographic crisis and population decline, South Korea recorded its second straight year of rising fertility rates and last year posted its biggest rise in bursts in almost two decades, up 6.8% from 2024. South Korea's government has tried everything to promote more kids, including expanding parental leave, housing subsidies, and giving people straight cash. But the reason for the baby bump may simply be timing. The people who are in the peak age for childbearing right now are known as the echo boomers, the kids of baby boomers who were born between 1991 and 1995. And there's just more of them. Others say the echo boomer effect is overstated and point to other causes like improved attitudes around having kids, more children born outside of marriage, and a spike in marriages after the pandemic. More babies is certainly welcome in South Korea, where the pension fund is projected to run out by 2065 if current demographic trends hold. but there's still a long way to go. The total fertility rate, meaning how many children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime is up to 0 It the first time it reached that mark in four years but far below the 2 needed to keep a population stable 21 of that population age 65 or more to your point on the pressure on the pension system. But also, look, the other thing that we don't talk about here is South Korea needs immigration. If that's not happening, they definitely need to get on top of the baby boom coming back. For my final number, have you all ever heard of Ube? If not, you will soon. It's absolutely blowing up on the U.S. food scene. The bright purple, social media-friendly yam, native to the Philippines, appeared on three times as many U.S. restaurant menus in 2025 compared to 2021, according to Bloomberg. And once you start looking, you'll see ube everywhere. Trader Joe's has an extensive lineup of ube products like pancake mix and ice cream. King's Hawaiian released an ube coconut dinner roll that flew off the shelves. And Starbucks is coming out with an iced ube coconut macchiato for a limited time in March. But the ube boom is also putting strain on farmers in the Philippines. Exports of yams spiked 43% in the first nine months of last year, more than half of which are going to the United States, but it's been difficult to keep up with that demand. Ube is mostly a homegrown backyard crop, not some mass-produced thing, and it's typically grown in a region that's vulnerable to typhoons. To prevent shortages, Bloomberg writes, the government has tripled its budget for handing out ube cuttings to farmers and is telling them to create more frozen and pureed products that can fetch higher prices. And what is your favorite way to eat ube? Definitely the ice cream. So my mom's from the Philippines. So I've been eating ube since I was like two years old. The stuff is delicious. The bright purple is beautiful. It's absolutely fantastic. This spoke to me. I'm really excited that this is happening. I've never had it actually. This trend is new to me. Maybe I don't frequent Trader Joe's enough, but apparently the Trader Joe's is kind of cornered the market on ube products, but you recommend ube ice cream. Totally, and I'm bringing it in. We're going to eat some ube pie together. And I'm going to introduce you to it. It's my honor. I would love that. And I don't want to bring the mood down, but I was talking to our producer Ray about this earlier. He's like, yeah, I don't like it that much. Oh, producer Ray. Come on. Come on, Ray. Get out of the program. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Boston just got two feet of snow. The Charles River is frozen over. And Duncan is out here selling a 48-ounce iced coffee bucket. For real, the chain has been testing a 40-ounce iced coffee bucket at some of its locations in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. and crazed New Englanders have been trekking in the dead of winter to find them. For some perspective, 48 ounces is twice the volume of a medium iced coffee and enough to fit 15 munchkins, according to the New York Times. With its iced coffee bucket challenge, Duncan appears to be trying to tap into a trend pioneered by independent cafes, some of which began offering massive coffee buckets last year to feed a viral frenzy. One of those cafes, Dolce Vita in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said it's 34 ounce lattes and coffees accounted for more than 30% of total orders. And what is more offensive to you, the 48 ounces or the fact that it's iced coffee in February? Okay, nothing about Dunkin' can ever offend me. I love Dunkin' Donuts. I get why America runs on Dunkin'. I would eat 15 munchkins in a heartbeat. I love it. It's weird to me there's iced coffee in February in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. That's bonkers. That's bananas. As someone, I'm from Massachusetts. Oh, good. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, it's a big honor. we love iced coffee all year round and isn't there that stat that Starbucks actually 70% of Starbucks' drinks are cold. People are drinking iced coffee all the time and so I think maybe the iced coffee part is not that surprising. The 48 ounce part is. I think people have sort of moderated not just their alcohol but their caffeine intake. They're just looking for small doses of things but maybe we are back to a world of caffeine maxing when it comes to people wanting these buckets I think also. Just like Ube we didn't really mention it, but it's a social media thing. People just kind of go crazy for showing off their bucket. So if I ever go back home, I will absolutely, actually, I think two of these, two of the locations near my home in Amherst, Mass are the ones that have the bucket. So I'm going to go check that out. You're going to be wired after that. We're going to see you bounce off the walls. I will be actually. I don't drink as much coffee as you might expect. Okay. Finally, if you've been sneaking around with your lover in hotel rooms and crave a getaway where you two can just be yourself, Airbnb just listed the famous cottage from Heated Rivalry. located on the shores of Ontario's Lake Muskoka over 120 miles north of Toronto the cottage served as a safe haven for the hit shows two stick handling lovebirds Shane Hollander and Elia Rosanoff and now it can be yours for a night or three doesn't sound like a bad state either the place has three beds three baths 400 feet of private waterfront with epic sunset views over the lake and things will inevitably get steamy thanks to a fancy radiant heating system that releases heat through the floor it's going for around 181 dollars a night for a short time but we'll probably get a lot more expensive once the promotional window ends. 181 bucks. That's a steal. This thing is going to get completely overridden. There is no way that this is less than 300 bucks in a couple of weeks. So actually the dollar amount has some sort of symbolic connection to the show because it's in Canada. So it's in Canadian dollars. So in Canadian dollars, this thing is going for $248.10, which is a reference to Rosanoff and Hollander's jerseys. I'm getting the sense that you haven't seen the show. Your sense is dead. I have not seen the show either. Somehow I know exactly what's going on. Toby talks about it a lot. People are talking about it. But I do want to point out that on Saturday night, Connor Story, who plays Ilya Rosanoff, is going to be hosting SNL. And people are very excited for that. They already came out with a very funny video yesterday. And he just seems like an actor who's absolutely blowing up now. So I'm sure a lot of people will be tuning in who are also interested in this air BB are going to be tuning in to SNL on Saturday. Yeah. I just want to congratulate you on just rolling off the tongue, the two stick handling lovers. Like as soon as she said that, I was like, you're very articulate. I don't think anybody's having a better winter than hockey from the Olympics to heated rivalry. Hockey's just blown up. Okay. That is all the time we have. Thank you for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. And I believe you have another podcast to record later this afternoon. You just rolled your eyes at me. Brew market. So if you enjoyed what Anne had to say, definitely check out her investing show around 5 o'clock Eastern, 4.30. It's perfect for your commute home from work. And if you want to get in touch with us, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morning Brew dot com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is gone birding. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show you, Stainia. We'll see you all tomorrow. Thank you.
